Found a problem so what next?

[Bjørn Mork]

John Whitmore <arigead at gmail.com> writes:

 I'm sure that this problem has been found and a patch submitted by now as it
> seems to have been from months ago. But assuming neither had occured and this
> was a new discovery how do you check for a reported bug? Do you search mailing
> list for that commit number, or a part of that commit number?

I cannot tell you what the best practice is, but at least that's what I
do.

Googling for a fix is usually pretty accurate once the problematic
commit has been found.  Both the short title and the 12 digit commit ID
should work, because they are included in the "Fixes" tag of the fix.

Unfortunately Googling isn't as accurate before you know the buggy
commit. In an ideal world, you should be able to find the fix based on
the symptoms described in the commit message. But this doesn't work well
for symptoms which occur frequently and with varying causes. "suspend
failing" is definitely one of those...

And yes, it is common to discover what you did: The bug is already found
and fixed, but the fix hasn't propagated yet. That can be a bit
demotivating until you realize the beauty of a system where someone else
already fixed your problem and documented the fix in a public "bug
database" :)


Bjørn